The Collaborator

“The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.”

I'd been working as a biomedical engineer at a government lab managed and administrated by the University of ___ for about 4 years after I finished my PhD program. I liked it there. We were doing great work in tissue engineering, creating inorganic particulate materials and polymer matrix composites. I was publishing. I was applying for patents. I was planning to sell the patents, marry my boyfriend and become a carefree MILF. That was my plan. I was proud of my work.

 Then I got headhunted.

In retrospect I'm quite ashamed of how cheaply I was bought. But to a woman with a ticking biological clock, a 5x salary increase feels like a golden ticket. I wasn't smart enough to scratch beneath the surface and see the canard. 

After months of emails the headhunter finally came to my city (more of a town - a little one) to take me to lunch. I like lunch. Especially when it's free. I cycle to work & get hungry. 

We met at a little peruvian place in a boutique hotel. 

I walk in with my helmet, lanyard and fanny pack, scanning for a man who I've only seen a photo of on linkedin. All I see is a tremendously fat guy about 20 years worse for wear than his linkedin avatar. 

I really just dont like fat men. It seems like a colossal moral failing. Men have much faster metabolisms than women. To take that for granted and get fat, well, it's a bit disgusting to me. Fat women don't bother me. I guess I'm a bigot.

"Richard..?"

He moves to stand. His girth is dwarfing the chair.

"Oh please don't get up. I'm Antoinette Rorez."

"Ms. Rorez, at last! I was just discussing your paper on nanofiber scaffolds with our board members. We were quite impressed with the diagrams, did you model those yourself?"

"Yes. Actually my partner helped quite a bit. I sketched them and he drew them on a WACOM tablet."

"How wonderful you can collaborate like that. We're big on collaboration at BIEMA," he pronounced the company name like a person from Massachusetts referring to a BMW and I cringed inwardly. 

"It's certainly an ideal worth fostering. I think each respective discipline has a lot to learn from each other," I smile blandly, neutrally.

I really want some ceviche and a rocoto relleno.

"I'm so pleased you feel that way. It's one of BIEMA's guiding principles."

"When, exactly was the company formed? I'm a bit unclear on that."

"Well, now that's quite the tale, Ms. Rorez. The current incarnation has been operating since 2009, but our founders, Anne Gordon and Peter Goodman have been, collaborators," he chuckles at his own reference, "since the mid 90s."

"Anne Gordon, she's a hero of mine. I took her seminar at Caltech when she was a visiting instructor."

Anne Freaking Gordon. I'd love to have access to her brain as a coworker. Good Lord!  I try to play it cool but I'm smiling beatifically at the mere idea. Be cool, Nettie!

Scenting this like a bloodhound, the corpulent Richard exclaims,

"We'd really like to have you with us." 

He bends down with quite an effort and reaches into an attaché to extract a binder with a meaty set of phalanges.

"We prepared this for you. There's a letter from Anne, and several of our board members. Not template letters Ms. Rorez, personal letters explaining why you should heheh - collaborate - with us at BIEMA."

Raising my eyebrows incredulously I take the folder. 

Our waiter arrives. 

I won't bore you with the rest of the encounter. Lets say I was greatly intrigued by the contents of that binder. 

Over the following weeks I read it repeatedly, dissecting every aspect and possible subtext to the letters, the compensation and benefits. I compiled a list of questions, pros and cons, consulted my boyfriend, my family and my friends. I sent emails and Zoom called with juggernauts in my field, all beckoning, flattering, coaxing me to their side.

Everyone on my end was supportive and the consensus was that maybe I could go further in the private sector. 

My boyfriend of two years was enthusiastic. He had just been discharged from the military and was ready to ditch our small town for somewhere with more opportunities. 

If I'd known even a fraction of what we were getting into I would've run crying to my mother.

But we'll get to all that soon enough, I reckon.

The next two years were some of the happiest of my life. Working with Anne Gordon was a dream come true and she quickly became a mentor and a confidante. More than a friend. She was family.

Nick and I eloped, and I found out I was pregnant. Anne was my biggest supporter and I continued to work until my 7th month and then I focused on publishing our research until my son was about 4 months old. I loved that time with my little family but it also felt great to get back in the lab again part time.

It was all so exhilarating, the stuff we were doing. The machines were were designing and fabricating in house. The money was rolling in, from GORK(God Only Really Knows)where.

Anne and I were featured on a segment of CBS Sunday morning. Disfigured animals and people we'd grown new composite inorganic/organic limbs for and had been seamlessly surgically attached. Organs made from tissue grown from the patient's own cells and a polymer mesh we developed and had stunning success without any immuno rejection.

I woke up the next day to a cacophony of interest from the world. It was exhausting. What does a woman like me even say to 200,000 twitter followers? The mischievous imp that sometimes hijacks my brain like a mech wanted to post dad and diaper blowout jokes. But I refrained and tried to use "my platform," for good; links to research, encouragement to young women in STEM. I can be disappointingly bland like that I suppose.

Tissue regeneration and inorganic composites was no longer just my purview it was my singleminded obsession. I became distracted at home. At night I dreamed of a flesh 3D printer that could repair and replace any part of the body that was damaged. I began to feel as though I had a divine purpose, right and mandate, in which the universe was collaborating with me to access it's knowledge directly and turn it into reality at BIEMA.

I felt chosen.

My husband began cheating on me.

In retrospect I can't say I blamed him. Did he resent my success and my passion? Did he no longer find me attractive? No, it was none of that. He claimed he was jealous of my closeness with Anne, of my desire to please her above all others. And so when one of the 22 year old bartenders at the golf club was up for it, he decided to risk it all.

The 22 year old ended up being spectacularly unhinged. Showing up to our home, emailing me. Calling me out on Twitter, begging me to divorce Nick so he could "be free." People noticed. I was utterly humiliated.

And I would've been fine with that. Setting him free. But I couldn't forgive the public spectacle that she created. I didn't care about her fucking my husband as much as her publicly humiliating me, our family. My work. I stayed with him out of spite.

It messed with me. I began entertaining elaborate revenge fantasies of having her disappeared and turned into fertilizer. 

But the humiliation didn't end with me. Nick was utterly demoralized by the ordeal, and rather sorry. But I just couldn't bear his pathetic weakness. I didn't want our son to pick up on it and mirror it. Husbands weren't supposed to get caught cheating. Husbands and fathers were supposed to be mysterious, exciting figures that shake up family life with adrenaline fueled adventures and hijinks.

I guess I took that Don Draper fantasy we both had in the beginning away from him with my careerism. He wanted to fix things, but there was too much resentment, too much humiliation. He suggested we have another baby, for me to scale my research and development projects back, and stay on in an advisory capacity, and to sell my stock options. 

I should've listened. The worst part of it all was Anne's pity. It wasn't just pity. I could feel the disappointment rolling off of her. I had never felt so lost. But I've always been skilled at compartmentalization. So I became laser focused on our projects, obsessive about my son's development. Sign language, tumbling, Waldorf toys. Classical music. Forest Kindergarten. The increasing unlikelihood of giving him a brother or sister ate away at my soul. I didn't want him to be a mollycoddled precious only child. I wanted him to have a best friend and collaborator. I wanted to give him a sibling.

Around this time we started collaborating *corpulent headhunter chuckle* with another exciting sector of biological engineering. Mycelium. I was in fresh awe of the structures and organization of mycelia. I began to feel inspired again.

About a year after the very public debacle of my husband's indiscretion, Anne took me to lunch. She said she had a pitch for me. I just hoped it wasn't a pity induced slow pitch.

"CBS wants to do another segment. On you. With a human interest angle. Healing broken hearts both figurative and literal, finding meaning in work and motherhood, reconciliation with Nick. I think it could be good for you, and by extension all of us."

"Annie I don't know. I don't like feeling like a circus freak or an ADHD news-cycle topic du jour. Henry is 4 years old. I don't want him to be an office breakroom discussion topic of thousands of strangers. Children deserve privacy,"

-- Anne cut me off here

"Nobody is saying you have to put his face on television or online. But you should talk about him. I know you're a private woman. You like your dignity. But your pride has been wounded and I think you should use this opportunity to take control of the narrative."

"I can't emasculate my husband further on national media, Anne! He's been moping around the house for the last year like a kicked dog. I can't bear for him to touch me. I thought he was a stronger man. I wish he's stood up to me. Put his foot down and made me stay home longer. He's a weakling and I'm a controlling maternal superego. I don't think things could get much worse."

"Just think about it, Nettie. I support you, whatever you decide. But please consider it, and talk to Nick. Tell him what you told me. Don't give up on your family just yet."

I have always been a rule follower, it was a way for me to feel in control. When you work in a research lab there's safety protocols and multiple redundancies to minimize risk. I prided myself on my rigid adherence to safety protocols. I never slipped up on my zealous adherence to procedures. So how did my life spin so spectacularly out of control? I guess I was just holding on too tightly, I was too greedy for it all.

Try to have it all, and you’re likely to lose it all, and a considerable portion of yourself in the process.